


Too Late

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having just lost Aredhel, Turgon has to get to know his nephew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Late

Turukáno was running up the spiral stairs.  _No, it couldn’t be true. There must be some mistake. It couldn’t be true. It was only a small wound after all, and the healers had even said she would regain full use of her arm soon enough._ Throwing open the door at the top, he burst into the room, slightly breathless. The sight that greeted him confirmed his worst fears.

In the large bed in the centre of the room was Irissë. She lay on her back, perfectly still, one hand folded across the sheet. Her left shoulder was swathed in a thick gauze bandage. Her hair was spread out on the pillows, but for a few strands clinging to her forehead. Her face was grey white, and her eyes were closed. In a chair at her bedside sat Maeglin. When they had first met earlier that day, Turukáno had thought him serious, solemn and difficult to read, although he had found himself growing to like his nephew despite this, or even perhaps because of it. But now Maeglin’s expression was all too easy for Turukáno to interpret. Maeglin’s eyes were red-rimmed, filled with a look of pain and anger and desperation. He clutched his mother’s hand in both of his. As Turukáno entered the room, he dropped her hand, angrily palming the tears from his eyes.

“Maeglin! Is it true then, what they say? Is she… is she truly dying? I came as soon as I heard.”

Maeglin looked at him for a moment before speaking. “You’re too late” he said finally, he voice hollow and cracking. “She’s gone. It was not long ago.” His Quenya was more strongly accented and broken now than it had been earlier.

Turukáno stared, eyes wide with shock, not quite able to believe it. “How?” he said finally. It was all he could manage. He knelt down by the bedside, clasping her other hand in his. Already it felt cold, so cold. Even on the Ice, her skin had always held some warmth, his bright, talkative sister, who had so often chased away the coldness in his own heart. He had almost forgotten that he had asked a question, when Maeglin answered it.

“Poison. It was on the javelin, the one meant for me…” he took a deep shuddering breath before continuing. “The healers didn’t know. It was a small wound, and the poison did not begin to act for several hours. But when it did… well… it is a particular poison that causes a swift decline.” Maeglin spoke stiffly, as if trying to keep himself detached. “I – I did not think that even my father would use such a thing. Forgive me.”

Turukáno was barely listening. He had not been there. He should have come to her room earlier, he should have been there… just when he had thought she had come back to him beyond all hope, he had lost her again. He had almost come to terms with her death, in the intervening years. It still hurt him, but it had subsided to a dull ache. And all those years, there had always been some part of him that hoped that she was alive, and happy somewhere. Free, away from Gondolin, like she had wanted. But now the wound had been ripped back open again, and he knew the truth with a brutal finality. She had come back to Gondolin, back to  _him_ , and she had paid with her life.

He looked up at Maeglin, who had stood up now. “Did she – was she in pain?” He steeled himself for the answer. He needed to know.

Maeglin considered. “Yes” he admitted finally. “At the very end, when the poison started to take effect. Yes she was. I held her hand.” Maeglin’s voice was matter-of-fact, but there were tears in his eyes. He blinked them back, angry again.

Suddenly Turukáno realised that Maeglin reminded him forcibly of Arakáno, when they had been younger. When they had been happy. He also realised that Maeglin, still only a boy really, had just lost his mother. He walked around the bed to where his nephew stood, and embraced him, awkwardly. Maeglin leaned his head forward onto Turukáno’s shoulder, taking comfort from the touch. Then Maeglin seemed to realise what he was doing, and his head snapped back a little. Turukáno stood back, and Maeglin was suddenly detached again, holding his head high, not making eye contact.  

Suddenly the door burst open again. There stood Itarillë, confusion in her eyes. She looked at Irissë on the bed, and she looked at Turukáno, and then at Maeglin, reading her father’s and cousin’s faces and the sorrow written there.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” she said softly, hesitantly.

Turukáno sighed. Itarillë had already lost her mother, but she had always had hope that at least Irissë may still be alive. She had talked to him, cheered him in the dark moments after his sister’s disappearance… this would hurt her badly, he knew, although she would try hard not to show it, for his sake. Wordlessly, Turukáno reached out to his daughter, wrapping his left arm around her shoulders as he had done when she was a child. His right arm he placed around Maeglin. The three of them stood like that for while, almost as if keeping some sort of strange vigil, each lost in their own thoughts.

 


End file.
